


kicker

by butchbugbear



Category: Smile For Me (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Implied Child Abuse, this is jusg like a bunch of scattered bits n pieces of nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 02:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19454557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butchbugbear/pseuds/butchbugbear
Summary: Putunia Mollar has just turned six years old, and it is her first attempt at running away from home.





	kicker

It’s almost sunset now, and the hum of the cicadas in the bushes almost drowns out the incessant pain gnawing at the inside of her stomach.

Putunia Mollar has just turned six years old, and it is her first attempt at running away from home.

The broken bits of gravel on the road crunch against her feet. It’s painful. She wasn’t prepared to leave, and she definitely wasn’t prepared to trek halfway up a mountain, yet here she was. It had been a very spur of the moment decision, after all. Her parents always told her that she was “too impulsive.” She didn’t know what that word meant, and they would have scoffed at her if she asked. But her parents weren’t here right now. No one was, except for her.

There’s the sound of… something, in the distance. A clang, a thud, a shuffle. It’s the only thing she can focus on anymore, so she follows it. She strays away from the road, into the trees, following the sound of dirt being pushed and pipes clanging until she reaches a worn dirt path leading up, up, up. So she follows.

At the end of the road, she reaches what looks like a construction site of some sort. Building materials are scattered around the area haphazardly, circling the basic structure of some tall rambling building. The design looks a bit silly to her, like something she might see in one of her cartoons.

She considers investigating more, but she—

A hand is on her shoulder. Big, heavy, adult. Someone is behind her, it’s too dark now to see clearly but someone is—

“Hell-o there little friend! Wat r you—“

The man behind her lets out a funny wheeze as she socks him in the stomach as hard as she possibly can. He falls like a house of cards, crumbling to the floor, and she runs.

It takes her hours to get back home, but she’s too afraid to slow down. Her parents are asleep by the time she climbs through her bedroom window and tucks herself into bed, breathing shakily and wiping away the dirt and snot from her face.

She hopes they’ve forgotten her absence already. She hopes sleep will sooth their inevitable rage. She hopes the punishment is light. And she wonders about the funny building, so distant in her memory now that it feels more like a dream.

* * *

Putunia Mollar is seven now, and it is her second attempt at running away. She tells herself that she is prepared this time. She is ready.

But she’s still hungry. She is a little older, a little stronger, but she is still so, so young, and she is tired, and hungry, and hurting. It’s difficult to become strong on a diet of malnutrition and bruises, she has learned. But she’s managed as best she could. And no matter what happens now, she will not go back to that house.

Her feet take her up a vaguely familiar road, and the sight of it itches at the back of her skull.

There are signs now, bright pastel pink and orange signs with funny little drawings telling her to “Turn Rite! Habitat this way!” covered in hearts and flowers and a decent amount of glitter. Putunia can’t really read that well, but she knows fine art when she sees it, so she follows them.

They lead her up, up, up, through a familiar path and into a clearing. There’s a building there now, shambly and strange in its construction, fully complete now. It looks familiar to her in a way she can’t quite place, but…

The gates leading into the building are open. It’s bright in there. She thinks she can smell food.

Putunia is so, so hungry. And cold. And tired. But beyond all that, she is also deeply curious.

She squeezes through the gates and runs inside.

* * *

“Tell me if this hurts, ok? :-)”

Disinfectant wipes swab her arms and legs, cleaning out the dirt and blood and pus that have been accumulating there for who knows how long. It _does_ sting, a lot more than she expected, but she just shakes her head. “NOTHING can hurt ME! You don’t have to worry!”

Dr. Habit smiles at her encouragingly and starts bandaging her knees. “I can tell that you are ve-ry strong!”

She kicks her legs excitedly. “Yes!! I am! I’m going to be a hero one day, just like Masked Driver!”

Her parents threw away her masked driver figurine a few days before she left. They always hated that show, her mother used to hiss that the theme song got on her nerves.

The doctor looks back up from her bandages and grins wide. “I LUV Masked Driver!!”

* * *

Putunia likes the Habitat. So far she’s the only kid there, but she doesn’t mind, because she’s being fed three times a day and the doctor lets her sing the Masked Driver theme song as long as she wants, and he gives her cola when she asks for it, and never tells her that she’s had enough. In the mornings she likes to go into the lounge and eat cereal with the doctor and the singer lady, and at night she runs up to the terrace and looks up into the stars and pretends that she’s flying.

Sometimes Habit is there with her at the terrace, and when she asks he picks her up in his arms and lifts her high, high off the ground, and she spins and spins and laughs until her stomach hurts and then they both lay down until the world stops spinning.

The only time she is ever told ‘no’ is when she gives the big bouncer guy a swift KA-KICK to the shins and a punch in the gut. He cries for three hours straight.

Habit plays a PSA that night about the dangers of punching, and there are new posters plastered around his office the next time she visits.

* * *

Another girl comes to stay a few months later. She’s taller, and says cuss words, and the first thing she does when she’s deposited into the Habitat is beat the snot out of Ronbo the clown.

Putunia likes her instantly.

They click with each other in the way that only small, strange little girls can, and they are best friends after six hours of knowing each other. They take turns wrestling each other in the carnival, playing pretend in the lounge and sharing big secrets with each other up on the terrace, whispering the words into each others ears.

“Putunia,” Millie whispers one day, grinning from ear to ear. “You’re the only person in this freakshow who can handle me.”

* * *

Dr. Habit doesn’t let her go into his office anymore.

* * *

“So uh,” the business man coughs into his fist, hunched over the bar while Putunia scarfs down her daily bowl of fruit loops. He taps his hand against the polished wood as he speaks. “You’re, what, five?”

“I’m seven!! And a _half!”_

“Oh god, that makes it worse, actually. Uh, erm—“ He can’t seem to sit still. He grabs a random empty bottle and starts polishing it with the sleeve of his suit. “Why uh, are you _here_ exactly? Did your parents let y—“

Putunia doesn’t like to talk about those people anymore, and she thinks it’s terribly rude of him to bring them up. So, she reacts the only way she knows how.

The man, Parsley she thinks his name is, let’s out an undignified screech as she gives him a hearty KA-PUNCH to the stomach. The bottle he’d been holding goes flying out of his hands and smashes against the floor, with his body soon following.

Putunia is no longer allowed to eat in the lounge after this.

* * *

Dr. Habit doesn’t hang out in the Habitat at all anymore.

The only times she sees him now are on the paintings lining the walls of the Habitat, or on the daily PSAs played over the TV screens each morning. The puppet he uses to represent himself on camera is absolutely, without a doubt, 100% percent evil. She wants to destroy it.

Kamal still won’t let her go into his office.

* * *

She stays up too late one night.

It usually isn’t a problem, it’s usually fine, Habit never minded _before_ , so why would he care _now._ The most he had ever done when she’d stayed up this late before was carry her back to her room cradled in his arms, half asleep and content.

But the airs been different lately. Her lungs have felt heavier lately. When night comes she’s too dizzy to speak, too tired to make it back to her bed. She curls up on the stairwell and waits, limbs too weak to move any farther.

* * *

_“Hmm, does sum-1 need a bedtime stor-ey? :-)”_

* * *

She doesn’t get much sleep that night. The PSAs looping on the television screen in her room keep her awake, too heavy to move. The images on the TV blur together in her eyes into a haze of sickly green, green, green, green like her mother’s favorite shirt and the villains on Masked Driver and the doctor, and his minions. She doesn’t remember when she finally falls asleep, but she wakes up the next day exhausted and confused, and

angry.

* * *

She sits in the dirt on the carnival grounds and plans. She ignores the growing pain in her stomach from not eating, and the bruises on her legs from being dragged up the stairs unconcious. She breaths deep and ignores the sheer wrongness of how the air settles in her lungs. It’s not important now, she can’t waste her time worrying about these things now. She’s got to fix this somehow. She has to be strong.

She’s not going to run away this time. She’s going to fight. She’s going to punch that stupid smile off of that evil, sickly green face.

She just needs to get herself a proper hero’s mask before she can do it.

**Author's Note:**

> *is picking little rocks and pebbles off of the ground and eating them like popcorn*  
> (title is frm “kicker” by (sandy) alex g which i wuz lsitening 2 when i wrote this n thats it thrs no other signifigance u_u)


End file.
